Honda’s Pedrosa and Stoner On Podium With Winner Lorenzo

Team-mates Dani Pedrosa (Repsol Honda RC212V) and Casey Stoner (Repsol Honda RC212V) finished second and third in today’s San Marino Grand Prix, a race won by reigning World Champion Jorge Lorenzo (Yamaha).

Dani PEDROSA (Repsol Honda Team)

Casey STONER (Repsol Honda Team)

Local hero Marco Simoncelli (San Carlo Honda Gresini RC212V) came out best from a breathtaking last-lap duel for fourth place with Andrea Dovizioso (Repsol Honda RC212V) to make it four Honda RCVs in the top five.

Stoner took pole position in yesterday afternoon’s qualifying session, but was by no means confident of scoring a fourth consecutive victory to further strengthen his lead in the World Championship. Stoner, Lorenzo and Pedrosa were covered by just 0.18s in qualifying, so all three men predicted that today’s race would be a close-run thing.

Pre-race tension was heightened by a smattering of rainfall before the start and during the first laps, but the rain never got anywhere heavy enough to force riders into the pits to swap to their ‘wet’ bikes.

Lorenzo made his intentions clear by snatching the lead into the first corner and despite the best efforts of Stoner and Pedrosa the Spaniard stayed there for the entire 28 laps. Wary of being in front with spots of rain falling here and there, Stoner was happy to stay behind his title rival during the early laps, while Pedrosa shadowed the pair in third.

That’s the way it stayed until lap 12 when Lorenzo upped his pace to set the fastest lap of the race and double his lead to more than a second. Within another half dozen laps he was more than three seconds ahead as Stoner began to struggle, apparently running out of strength, a result of jetlag and subsequent sleep deprivation following last weekend’s Indianapolis Grand Prix.

Stoner’s target had now changed, from winning the race to defending second place, but he was struggling to get his bike stopped and was therefore running wide in the turns, which threw him back into the clutches of his team-mate. There are no team orders at Repsol Honda, so Pedrosa sped past Stoner into the high-speed Curvone right-hander with six laps to go. Pedrosa could do nothing about the leader, however, though his second consecutive runner-up spot did move him slightly closer on points to third-placed Dovizioso.

Dovizioso ran fourth in the early stages, then came under successful attack from long-time rival Simoncelli, but he rallied his forces in the final ten laps as he came under pressure from Ben Spies (Yamaha). With three laps to go Dovizioso rode past Simoncelli, with Spies looking to get in on the act. On the last lap Simoncelli once more overtook his fellow Italian and the trio were pretty much side by side as they rode into the slow-speed Quercia left-hander for the last time.

Dovizioso and Spies squeezed past Simoncelli but both ran wide, allowing Simoncelli (who hails from Cattolica, just a few kilometres from the track) to sneak back ahead. Simoncelli beat Dovizioso over the line by 0.037s, with Spies a further seven tenths down.

Hiroshi Aoyama (San Carlo Honda Gresini RC212V) had a busy race, battling for a top-ten finish with several different rivals. He eventually crossed the line in 11th place, less than two second behind Cal Crutchlow (Yamaha). Toni Elias (LCR Honda MotoGP RC212V) scored the last championship point in 15th.

Marc Marquez (Team Catalunya Caixa Repsol-Suter) continued his relentless and remarkable progress in the Moto2 World Championship, scoring his fifth win from the last six races to further reduce the gap on points leader Stefan Bradl (Viessmann Kiefer Racing-Kalex) who finished the race in second place.

This was another classic Moto2 encounter, with action-packed racing all the way to the non-points scoring places. The main players up front were Marquez, Bradl, Brno winner Andrea Iannone (Speed Master-Suter) and Scott Redding (Marc VDS Racing Team-Suter) who all led at one stage or another.

Redding was in front until just before the halfway mark when he was caught by the other three who had been passing and re-passing each other as they closed on the Briton. After surviving several slides during the early laps, Marquez got into the groove and grabbed the lead for the first time on lap 13, sweeping past Redding into Curvone. He stayed in front for a couple of laps until Iannone made his first push into the lead at Quercia, where much of the overtaking was done.

The final ten laps continued in the same vein: Iannone leading, then Bradl, then Iannone again, then Marquez again with five laps to go. Once again, Marquez seemed to have it all worked out, making his bid for freedom at exactly the right moment. While Bradl and Iannone disputed second place, the young Spaniard was able to build a small gap to cross the line 0.619s ahead of Bradl, who retook second place from Iannone in a highly tense last-lap duel. With five races remaining Bradl leads the championship by 23 points.

San Marino rider Alex De Angelis (JIR Moto2-Motobi) finished in fourth place after a spirited charge from seventh on lap one. The local star took fourth from Redding on the last lap. Redding at least managed to equal his best result in the season in what has been a challenging season so far. He was followed over the line by compatriot Bradley Smith (Tech 3 Racing-Tech 3) who was snapping at the heels of the leading pack throughout most of the race.

Yuki Takahashi (Gresini Racing Moto2-Moriwaki) was also on the pace throughout, but could never quite latch onto the lead group. He finished seventh, only five seconds behind Marquez. Thomas Luthi (Interwetten Paddock Moto2-Suter) had a good ride from outside the top ten.

Esteve Rabat (Blusens-STX-FTR) wasn’t able to repeat his podium from Indy, but nonetheless had a strong ride, coming through from 20th on the first lap to finish 11th, just a few metres ahead of Julian Simon (Mapfre Aspar Team Moto2-Suter), Dominique Aegerter (Technomag-CIP-Suter) and Michele Pirro (Gresini Racing Moto2-Moriwaki).

The MotoGP and Moto2 paddock reconvenes in a fortnight’s time for the Aragon Grand Prix in Spain, the last European round of the championship before November’s season-finale at Valencia, also in Spain.

Marco SIMONCELLI (San Carlo Honda Gresini)

Andrea DOVIZIOSO (Repsol Honda Team)

MotoGP: Dani Pedrosa (Repsol Honda RC212V): 2nd
“I’m a little disappointed with the race because the bike didn’t feel as good as it was in practice. We wanted to make a change to the suspension to improve it a little, but we had the opposite effect. Sometimes it happens. From the first lap I realised I couldn’t keep up with Jorge and Casey, at the beginning the bike was closing the front and then it was sliding the rear. The second part of the race was good, Jorge had a perfect race today, but I was able improve my times lap by lap and catch Casey. I overtook him and maintained my rhythm to the finish with another second place in two weekends, which is not so bad. We’ve been lucky today as it was cooler than yesterday and finally the rain didn’t come. It’s been two very demanding races in a row and this one in particular was perhaps the toughest of the season so far, as the circuit is challenging with so many hard braking areas and it was hot again. Also, after Indy it has been difficult to recover from the jetlag and fatigue. Let’s hope we can get some rest and be stronger for Aragon.”

Casey Stoner, Repsol Honda: 3rd
“At the beginning of the race I was cautious as there were a few spots of rain. Once this cleared up I was pretty comfortable behind Jorge, I didn’t feel the need to push and then the tiredness suddenly hit me. It was hard to find the braking points and change direction on the bike, there was nothing wrong with the tyres, nothing wrong with the bike, the team did a great job and gave me a fantastic package. I’m just worn out. After the past few races I’ve had to put in a lot more effort in Laguna and Brno, riding a lot harder than I normally would. This together with the neck injury from Assen, which I’ve been struggling to recover from due to lack of training from the hectic race calendar, has finally caught up with me. For the second half of the race I was just too tired, simple as that. I’m very grateful to have finished on the podium. All credit to Jorge, he had a fantastic race, hopefully by Aragon I’ll be fully fit and recovered.”

Marco Simoncelli, San Carlo Honda Gresini: 4th
“A podium finish is always more satisfying than fourth place, of course, but this result feels just as nice because it was such a close and hard fight at the end. Unfortunately I made a mistake and chose the wrong engine map at the start which made me lose touch with the front three, otherwise maybe I could have run with them. I had to make up ground and when I got to fourth place I defended it tooth and nail to win a wonderful battle with Dovizioso and Spies on the last lap. I had held fourth for 23 laps and I couldn’t let myself lose it at the end. It was nice, I had fun and I think I provided some excitement for my fans. They deserve it because they have backed me through some tough times.”

Andrea Dovizioso, Repsol Honda: 5th
“It was a tough race, I had to push hard and ride aggressively and we had to cut the power a lot due to fuel consumption issues. We suffered from this during the whole race weekend, but after warm-up I received the bad news that we had to cut even more power. This hasn’t been such a big issue this year and in fact it has never been the case that I am unable to match Simoncelli in acceleration. This stems from the riding style and the set-up of the electronics, especially the engine braking. I knew that with this cut in power it would have been impossible to fight for the podium, so this affected my motivation. We had a good battle with Marco and Spies. On this occasion, for the first time this season, Marco beat me so congratulations to Marco. It was a good battle but our target was to gain some points on Lorenzo and we didn’t manage to. We are still third in the championship which is the most important thing. We are confident and will continue working.”

Hiroshi Aoyama, San Carlo Honda Gresini: 11th
“That was a really tough race – with the heat it felt like we were in Malaysia. I am not delighted with the result, but I am happy that we set some good consistent laps during the race that can give us confidence for the future. Unfortunately on lap 11 I made a mistake that cost me some time but overall we have had another positive weekend and that will help us in the final few races.”

Toni Elias, LCR Honda MotoGP: 15th
“We tried a few adjustments in morning warm-up but we could not get any improvement so we went back to the settings we already knew for the race. I could lap in the low 1m 36s range but after some laps the other guys started to lap in the 1m 35s range and it was impossible to for me to match their pace. In the middle of the race I felt the same issues I felt practice – missing front-end confidence. This weekend we did not take any steps forward and this is frustrating for me and the team, but we will try to solve this situation in Aragon.”

Moto2:
Marc Marquez, Team Catalunya Caixa Repsol-Suter: race winner
“The race was so difficult and the last few laps were really hard. In the beginning I made a few mistakes and nearly crashed, but then I was able to improve my confidence with the bike and this was so important. I saw Redding and Iannone pushing very hard, so I pushed my best and finally I was able to get into the lead. In the final few laps I was able to open a gap on the other riders. I am so happy with his victory because Bradl was so fast in qualifying practice, but in the race were took the win. My thanks to the team for working so hard here.”

Stefan Bradl, Viessmann Kiefer Racing-Kalex: 2nd
“It was another great battle. At the beginning I lost some time because I had a few slides – I was on the limit with the tyres, so I had to work really hard to get my confidence back. I was quite strong on braking, but during the last few laps the tyres began to go away. I saw Marc going away so I tried hard to close the gap. In the end the best I could do was second. Coming back from Indy where we had problems, this was better, but we at Indy we did find something in the set-up that made me believe I could fight for the win. No we need to work some more because we need to find something else from the bike so we can fight Marc.”

Andrea Iannone, Speed Master-Suter: 3rd
“That was a difficult race, but it’s great to score my first podium at Misano, where the last few years haven’t been great for me. I tried to save the tyres during the early laps so I can use them fully in the later stages. My plan didn’t work because Marc and Stefan still had a great pace at the end. I want to say thanks to my team, but we still have some more work to do.”